colnago62

It seems like if you are involved in an endurance activity, intensity is accounted for by TSS

By using TrainingPeaks’ Training Stress Score® (TSS®) system you can gain points for virtually any sport or activity. This allows any endurance athlete the ability to quantify their workouts based on their relative intensity, duration, and frequency of workouts. One single value can now represent how hard, and how long you worked out. 100 points earned by a pro is relatively the same as 100 points earned for a beginner because TSS is relative to each person’s individual threshold. Dr. Andy Coggan and Hunter Allen pioneered TSS with the original seed concept being developed by Dr. Eric Bannister’s heart rate-based training impulse (TRIMPS).Once you start to understand the simple scoring system, you will even be able to assign a daily point score through perceived exertion. Here is an explanation of how TSS works and some tips if you are just getting familiar with TSS:

• You earn 100 TSS for an all out, 100%, 60-minute workout. Of course most workouts are not completed at 100%, so most workouts will accumulate less than 100 TSS per hour.
• You can earn more than 100 TSS within a single workout (as long as it is longer than an hour), but never more than 100 TSS per hour.
• Think of intensity as an RPE value on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the hardest. If you exercised at a level 5 for two hours, then you would accumulate 50 TSS/hour or 100 total points. It wouldn’t matter if you were training for the Tour de France or to simply complete your first triathlon.

I can see how this system would not work well for someone doing mainly AC type workouts.

Seattle Forrest

Man, I loved Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets.

Seattle Forrest

You can get a TSS of 100 by riding as hard as you can for an hour, which is going to tax both your major energy systems, or with a long Z2 ride with no anaerobic input. Unless I'm missing something?

colnago62

As stated, when was the last time you rode as hard as can for an hour? Most riders are not doing that. If you are and judging by the posting you have done here, you are not, then you are right this system would not work well for you. Sprinters find that TSS does not work well for them because they do very intense intervals followed by nearly complete recovery so they may only ride 10 miles in a work out but it is much more intense than an endurance rider is riding.

Seattle Forrest

I agree that you don't do a full 60 minute FTP test very often, but that doesn't really change the situation. Because you accumulate TSS with time or intensity, it doesn't tell you anything about aerobic/anaerobic contribution for a ride, for the last month, whatever. You can guess at it looking at your IF for the last bunch of rides, but HR data takes almost all the guess work out of it.

colnago62

You can use your power meter numbers to tell how much time in each zone you spent. Training Peaks does that automatically for you for the ride, week, month. In addition to doing that, Training Peaks also does a good job of determining fatigue and the balance between fitness. A lot top riders use the system.

colnago62

Just some additional viewpoints on the subject.

caloso

It's fairly simple to exceed 100tss in an hour or less if you're doing sprint work. Here's one from a 6x1' workout. The one-minutes were all out, and recovery was literally coasting and softpedaling until I felt ready to go again. It's the NP vs. AP too.

colnago62

Thats why you see more endurance athletes using it than speed specialists. It really wasn’t designed for short intensity. At the velodrome, your intensity factor goes through the roof. At least mine does.

Duganator9

I always use both because I'm a turbo numbers nerd.

caloso

Yeah, I was definitely wrecked after this workout. Needed much more recovery than if I had gotten 113tss doing a tempo ride.

rubiksoval

All that matters is speed (to me).

Power is the most important factor I can train in regards to going faster.

HR? Not so much.

Overreached? HRs lower. Hot and humid? HRs higher. Out of shape? HRs higher. Bonking? HRs lower. Just had three off days? HRs higher. Etc. HR is fickle.

rubiksoval

Indeed. NP is gimmicky as hell. I've done 1 hr workouts with 45-50 minutes of Z1-2 and had an NP 25-30 watts over FTP.

rubiksoval

My cautionary tale of HR:

When I was a massively over-eager junior I trained solely with hr (right before the first powertap came out, when the only other option was $2000 SRMs). It's hilarious and frustrating looking back, but it completely ruined my training.

I'd do 8-15 minute repeat workouts all throughout the winter starting at repeats at lactate threshold - 10 beats and progressing to repeats at threshold, and then moving toward 3-5 minute repeats at threshold + 3-5 bpm. Not knowing any better, I'd sprint the first 20-30 seconds until I got my hr to the correct bpm and then just try to hold it there for the duration of the repeat. As is expected (but completely unbeknownst to me at the time), I DIED on every repeat and got to the point of absolutely hating doing any type of "threshold work" or time trialing efforts.

Even worse than that, I was routinely doing 12-18 hours a week so as my build blocks continued and I got more and more fatigued, my hr would consequently get lower and lower, meaning I'd have to go harder and harder to get my hr into the correct zone, so by March of each year I'd just be toast and I'd make the call to my coach that I couldn't do these workouts anymore (this happened at least 3 years in a row. Utterly horrendous coach!). And then I felt I wasn't training "hard" enough. No wonder I burned out every July. I feel I seriously stunted my progress as a U-23 rider.

When I first got a powermeter, I was already a cat 1 and I set out to do one of my first workouts, a 45 minute tempo at 270w and I died. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't maintain a steady effort at such a high(ish) power output.

As many training with power will attest to, once you move from training with HR to power, you'll notice that on steady efforts your hr will be significantly lower in the beginning than in the end, and that if you try to get hr high in the beginning, your power will spike and then likely drop off substantially. Doing repeats was 100% different for me after getting a powermeter, and all of the sudden I became much more capable of doing long tempo and threshold workouts and thus improved my training and racing a significant amount. Whereas my first workout trying to do a 45 minute tempo was a bust, years later I got to the point of holding even higher power for multiple hours. It was very revolutionary. And as I worked through longer training schedules and my hr decreased, I was able to still train accurately with power and not dig myself into a hole I couldn't get out of.

RChung

I already "liked" your post but I like it so much I wish I could "like" it again.

I wouldn't quite say that. I would say that NP is actually pretty transparent about what it's doing. It tells you something but it doesn't come close to telling you everything, just as a mean or a standard deviation tell you something but they don't come close to telling you everything. I chose those comparisons because, mathematically, NP is related to the mean and to the standard deviation. That said, the entire NP ecosystem (NP, FTP, IF, TSS, ATL, CTL, and TSB) can be a little gimmicky.

Drew Eckhardt 

When I'm training or riding long distances, although I didn't for 1-2 hour relaxing rides.

Heart rate is useful for pacing long efforts because your aerobic threshold heart rate (AeT, VT1) doesn't shift much based on training.

More importantly, it can suggest when things aren't right. Heart rate lower or higher than expected can suggest over-reaching which will become over-training.

I've had fatigue, chest tightness, a dry cough and headache since an apparent cold 11 weeks ago starting March 5th.

After some video visits, multiple lab tests, and eventually conceding we needed an in-person visit my doctor noticed I had unusually slow heart rate recovery after running up and down the stairs.

She told me to get a resting echo cardiogram and stress test in the next two weeks which is scheduled.

I broke out my heart rate strap for my next daily ride and measured the same thing. I actually didn't get back to my normal resting heart rate for hours after stopping.

If I'd known about that I would have seen a doctor sooner and brought it up.